This study investigates the impact of 293 public to private buyouts in the UK manufacturing industry during the period 1997-2007 on firms’ technical efficiency using a probabilistically matched buyout dataset. I use data envelopment and stochastic frontier analysis techniques to empirically measure production efficiency, which differs from most previous studies where the impact of financial performance or the movement in a company’s share price is tested. For the sample used and period investigated, no evidence is found that companies involved in public to private buyout ownership changes operate more efficiently than a control sample of PLCs not involved in buyouts. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that managers of PLCs have learned how to operate their companies in a similar way to those owned by private equity.